Snowbound - Harlequin.com

246 SNOWBOUND
listening to somebody else. Somebody in such agony,
he couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut.
His sister’s antennae quivered. “She?”
John gripped the back of the chair. Looking down,
he saw distantly that his knuckles were white. “I met
someone.”
He thought he heard Liz murmur, “Hallelujah,” but
wasn’t sure.
“Fiona’s a teacher. She and eight of her students were
snowbound here during that big storm in November.”
She nodded, as if slotting pieces into a puzzle. “So
what happened?”
“We e-mailed afterward. She came up to stay over
Christmas break.”
“Ah.”
“She wanted me to tell her what happened.” Realizing
one hand had somehow come to be touching his
scar, John yanked it away and gripped the chair again.
“And?” Liz prodded.
“I can’t keep reliving it for everyone who’s curious.”
“Curious? You want her to love you, but you can’t tell
her about something so fundamental to who you are
now?”
Desperate, he asked, “Why do the details matter?”
“Because they matter to you. If they didn’t, you’d be
able to talk about it.”
“That’s simplistic,” he argued.
All she did was challenge him with a look, something
she’d perfected by the time she was five years old. “Yeah?”
When he didn’t—couldn’t—answer, she said, “So,
you blew it with this—Fiona? Is it a hopeless cause?”